The room was silent. Jules felt a weird mix of Ha! I told you! and despair that she did share some similarities with the men in this room.

‘It was IVF with me too,’ the quiet red-headed man said. Jules stared at him in amazement. ‘My wife was just… crying all the time. If she wasn’t crying, she was angry – those hormones – and that’s when I started gambling. I could be there, beside her, but at the same time someplace else.’

‘My daughter was unwell,’ the man with the shaky leg said. ‘Leukaemia. And I’d sit by her bedside, in the hospital, placing bets.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t stop when you’re winning and you can’t stop when you’re losing.’ A murmur of knowing acceptance reverberated around the room. Slowly their stories began to resonate. The whys and the you knows, because she did know. She knew how you could betray the people you loved because in that moment it was the only thing that made sense.

*

She was pensive as she made her way home on the overground. It was cool outside now and she wished she’d brought a light jacket. She hugged her bare arms in against her chest, wistfully thinking of the corporate taxis she used to travel in. She still couldn’t quite reconcile herself with the men she’d met at the meeting. These people didn’t have a choice. They were mostly on low incomes, when they gambled it was everything; when she gambled, it was something to help distract her from her grief, it was temporary, until her next pay cheque and bonus. It wasn’t ideal and she’d definitely gone too far, but she was putting it right now, wasn’t she? Did that make her an addict? It was such a heavy word, she felt it slumber on her shoulders, lion paws, an anaconda, pinning her to the ground as she trudged home from the station. Could she really have made it this far in life if she were an addict?

It was a pound coin, glinting in the gutter, that did it. Illuminated like a star by the street lights. It felt like a sign. Certainly something to act upon. She could gamble with this pound coin, discarded in the street, and she could stop. She thought of Alice in the casino and her joy at winning her €5 bet. Maybe she needed to transition back to the gentle buzz she used to feel when she put money on the horses with her father? She held the pound coin in her palm. Rubbed her thumb along its edges and bumps in her pocket. There was something beautiful about its circularity, its promise. At home she placed it on her mid-century coffee table and sat back, flipping on the retro ball arc floor lamp. Alice had created a Mad Men-style den in here and Jules was used to gasps and exclamations when people saw it for the first time, as the Mantels had. Alice had a flair for marrying textures and colours, that was obvious, but Jules had always thought that Alice’s true skill was in taking something mundane, or ordinary, like the small nook in the corner, and making it shine, as she had with the inclusion of a vintage cocktail trolley. As she had when she first met Jules at le Bal and with a few small adjustments had transformed her from an awkward spotty teen to a woman ready to dazzle. It was the exquisite little details that Alice noticed, which others might miss, and brought to life. Combining things that shouldn’t work, at least to Jules’s mind, like the orange-and-brown geometric rug under the coffee table and the plum-leather wing-backed chair in the corner, but did. It was a gift. She’d probably have gone to university having never been kissed, were it not for Alice. Oh Alice.